McCain on WVOC: He’s hopeful, concerned over budget, Middle East

As the often polarizing debate on the nation’s budget continues in Congress, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are expressing their frustration with the continued impasse on what programs she be cut significantly or eliminated. Last week, members of Congress reached a two-week spending agreement to avert a government shutdown, but the threat of an eventual government shutdown still looms.

In a recent (and rarely-granted) interview, Arizona U.S. Senator John McCain spoke with SCRN affiliate WVOC and says he is frustrated with the tug-of-war between the Republican majority House and the Democratic majority Senate. McCain says he doesn’t want a shutdown, but his fellow GOP members of Congress, especially the freshmen, must remember that voters sent them to Washington “to stop the spending.”

McCain, who won the 2008 South Carolina Republican presidential primary, has in the past been viewed as a moderate who has not always seen eye-to-eye with the conservative wing of the GOP and that would include members of the Tea Party.

A member of the Senate committees on Intelligence and Armed Forces, McCain says he is hopeful that the upheavals in Egypt and Libya will translate into a new wave of democracy across the Middle East, but he is wary that extremists groups could “hijack the revolutions.”

McCain says President Obama should have already declared a “no fly zone” over Libya.

McCain says U.S. armed forces are making significant progress in putting down the Taliban threat in Afghanistan, but he remains concerned about the corruption in the Karzai government.